Shalnark slunk away slowly and took the backstreets, speeding through them quickly to get behind the man's stall. Right at the corner, as he paused to catch his breath, pressing his back up against the rough brick wall. At the rate his pulse was pounding, it felt like his heart would leap right from its rib cage.

He needed that welding tip. This was probably the only time he could get it. He didn't have anything to pay with, and he certainly didn't have the skills needed to fight a professional, but Shalnark had speed to work with. He'd stolen before, though never in such an open way.

He tried to calm his thundering heart. Why was his breathing so loud? He would be found out before he could even start! Still, he forced himself to stand by his own legs. He stepped away, just barely in the shadow of the building so he could start running, snatch what he needed, and never look back. The person he was up against was a fighter, but his arm was broken. Surely he wouldn't give chase for a small item. He closed his eyes and envisioned where the tool he needed would be, exactly where it had been laying when he saw it last.

Shalnark pushed off, exposing himself to the light. The welder was exactly where he'd remembered it to be, and he shot forward, his fingers aiming for the tool on the mat. He only had eyes for its silvery gleam.

The moment he felt a strong grip on his wrist, he knew he was done for.

The man had grasped him firmly before he'd even brushed the welder, holding up by the arm to look him in the eye. He took a good look at Shalnark's defeated face before sneering. "Trying to steal from me?" When he tried to break free from his hold, the man only dangled him around in the air, taunting him.

Shalnark was held by the wrist, swinging, left and right and in circles. The man wasn't even standing up, leaving him to wonder how freakishly tall he was. A bit of him marveled. He'd never met a giant before. "Let me go," he grunted, knowing very well that there was no way in the world it was ever going to happen. He pawed at his thick fingers with his bandaged hand, somehow trying to pry them away.

The man's eyes landed on the injury. With a quick toss, he'd switched from holding Shal's good arm to gripping the elbow of his bad one, to closely inspect the injury and bandages. "Where'd you get these?"

"None of your business," he huffed, trying to break loose of his hold and yelping when the man only gripped his already injured arm harder. The man glared at him, and he could feel his confidence shrink significantly. Under the circumstances, it would have been so easy for him to be snapped in two.

The man snorted at his blatant defiance despite the circumstances. "Everything has a price," he said as he twisted the boy in such a way so that he could sit on his back. "What'd'ya want, runt?"

Shalnark felt like his ribs would crack from the pressure. The giant had to be at least seven times his own body weight, but he was being used as a cushion. He was effectively pinned down, and couldn't help but think that this crushing someone was a sick type of torture method. "You're... not getting anything... out of me," he managed to say with the little air he could draw into his lungs.

He laughed heartily. "If I planned to kill you, I would've just crushed your little head with my hand. At ease. I just want to know where you got that medical treatment."

At this, he was able to temporarily forget his suffocating soul to quirk up an eyebrow. "But everyone knows where to get medicine," he stated. "You go to Kat and he'll hook you up with anything."

"I caused a bit of an incident there." The man shrugged. "It was just a little blood splattered, but that apprentice girl hasn't let me anywhere near the place since."

"Machi? That's strange, she's usually very nice and is open to negotiate." Shal's brows furrowed. "Why didn't you assume I got these bandages from Kat? Naturally, you would think that."

His lips twisted. "If that old man did the quality of work you have on your hand right now and forced people to pay for it, he would be dead."

Shal peered at his hand. He'd thought Senja's bandaging had been rather nice, but now without that grateful haze—bias—obstructing his view, he was able to register the uneven strips of fabric, hanging loose at some points and tight on others. It wasn't nearly as good as a normal bandaging from anybody, an amateur attempt, but it was still from his caretaker. And he didn't like when someone insulted her work. "At least I have wrappings. What happened to you?"

"I'm asking the questions here," the giant stated, and picked up something in his enormous hands, waving it in front of Shalnark's face tantalizingly. "You wanted this, right? Tell me where you got those bandages and bring me to them or else I'll crush it."

He hesitated. Shalnark was very good at negotiations, able to draw away his opponent's attention to lesser details to get the information he wanted and the better deal of the two. Usually he was in a position where he could manipulate with ease, but now he was trapped and at a disadvantage. His desperation for the piece was showing, and it was costing him dearly. When the man's fist started to clench, Shalnark gave in.

"Fine!" he exploded, lungs almost lifting up the weight of the man with the force of his words.

The giant got off his back and let him stand eventually, gripping his collar so he wouldn't escape, and he snatched the welding piece as quickly as he could. They both bared teeth, one sarcastically grinning to display is annoyance, and the other victorious.

* * *

"Senja," Shalnark called, wondering as soon as he did so whether it was alright for this giant to know his caretaker's personal name. He mumbled his usual "I'm home" under his breath and as quickly as he could so as to let it escape the man's ears.

The man whistled. He pushed Shalnark to the side and stepped in, looking at the scrapped cars lining one side of their lodgings, and the table littered with metal and various tools in a corner. His eyes shifted, roving until he found a burner, Shalnark's bag, and a jar of bread that had almost been hidden but not quite. A corner of it was jutting out of the dirt. "Some shack you got here." He started to dig out the food with a single hand, elbowing Shalnark elsewhere when he tried to stop him.

The boy scowled, adjusting his hair so that it swept across his forehead. He set the welding piece down on his table. "We make do." He really didn't want the man to eat their reserves, but he could already see the bread dry and cracking from a distance. Senja was supposed to bring food home today, if payment didn't get pushed off or diminished like it had been lately. Shal supposed it made up for it.

"And?" The man pinned the jar under his armpit, muscles pronounced as he opened its lid with one hand. "Where's the person who's going to treat me?"

"Patience." Shalnark pulled out a crate to sit on, and attempted to connect the pieces together so he could get on with welding already. He had a job to do, and it was due in half a day, he simply had no time to talk to a giant with crazy hair. But as he tried to connect the tip with the box, he caught on the little scratches, stains and scrapes that all connected together once the two tightened shut.

Seizing it close, he brought it around and inspected it. He stood abruptly.

"This is my welder!" he shouted, waving the nozzle in the air. "Why do you have a part of my welder? Did you sneak in here to take it? And here I was, thinking it was all because of some stupid crow!"

The man stopped in his chewing, the jar of bread now entirely empty since the ten seconds he'd seen it last. His sinewy neck titled to the side, then had an epiphany. "Oh." He licked his lips at the memory. "That bird tasted good. Little stringy, though."

"You ate the bird with my welder?" Shalnark didn't know whether to scream questions or exclamations, but his voice was already hoarse. All of that, he'd gotten caught stealing his own welding bit, had gotten sat on for it, had almost had his ribs crushed for it, had wasted away hours of work he could never get back. He groaned and dropped his head into his palms. "I give up."

He didn't believe himself to be an optimist, nor a pessimist. Senja told him he didn't smile enough, but the judgmental looks he got from others told him they believed her deluded sunshine was starting to leak into him. These two things balanced out, leading Shalnark to conclude that he was in actuality neither of these things. What he saw was simply a cup with water, giving no heed to its volume relative to the air.

He saw things as they were, and today was seen as utterly horrible.

"I'm ba... oh, Shal, you have a visitor?" Seeing an opening, Senja strided over and placed a kiss on his sulking head before he could escape.

He didn't have the energy to shout 'disgusting' and push her away, but he did have the energy to clench his fists as the man broke into roaring laughter, hitting the ground and shaking the structure with the volume of his chortling.

He pouted. "It's not funny."

The giant evidently thought it was very funny because he continued to wheeze.

"I-it, it spreads germs and it's unhygienic and icky and yucky and-"

He started to slap his knee as he howled, and his face began turning red from lack of oxygen.

Shalnark's face reddened for an entirely different reason, and he turned away to look his caretaker square in the eye. "Senja," he tried to warn, though it came out more a groan.

They waited for the man to completely stop laughing, which took a quarter of an hour during which Shalnark tried to work with one hand, but couldn't, too distracted to make any progress. He did eventually cease, but it was no comfort to the boy, because replaced with his hysterics was a dangerous glint in his eyes, a certain mischievous gleam that informed him this instance would be something to tirelessly tease him about for years to come.

He hoped the man would die before then.

"Oi, woman," the giant finally said, holding out his mangled arm. "The runt there said you could fix this. Can't go to Kat's because that girl won't let me near."

"Little Machi?" She clucked her tongue once as she pulled out the box of medical supplies. "Shame. What did you do to earn her wrath?"

Shalnark turned his back on the two and did his best to work in the failing sunlight. Behind him, their chatter grew and grew, showing no signs of stopping anytime soon as they talked and laughed, spoke of the best way to cook ravens and skirting around questions they didn't want to answer. His one good hand stalled, twitching in the air before he snapped.

"Shut up already!" He hated how his voice sounded so high-pitched, unable to intimidate either of them.

"Shalnark," Senja chided, "that was very rude."

"Yeah, Shalnark," the man mimicked. "Real mean."

His cheeks puffed out. "I have twelve hours to work!" was all he could offer up in retaliation before he shoved a welding helmet down onto his head and pulled on mitts. Out of his frustration, he didn't bother to wear ear protection, instead sending loud screeching noises into the air before either teasing party could react. It hurt his own eardrums, but it came with the satisfaction that he was also hurting theirs, and that was fun.

His ears rang even after he'd finished, and though it distracted him, it was a white noise he could come to ignore. It helped in blocking out their talking. He hadn't expected this fighter to get along so well with his caretaker, but they did under some unforeseen circumstance, and he wanted him to leave before the man blurted out just how he'd come to know Shalnark.

"Why don't you join us for dinner?"

The only word running through his head was 'nonononono', and he mentally begged the man to respond as such.

"Food? Sure."

Shalnark cursed his inability to telepathically communicate.

He knew Senja was a careful woman. She had acted normal when arriving only because if she didn't, it would throw the man into whack, and it would be more difficult to determine his motives and intentions in being there. She had been right to be wary, and it was good to question the man. But this warming up to him had come far too quickly. Still, he could do nothing to stop it as Senja pulled out an extra crate and the man sat down on it, crushing it with his weight but able to reach the table whilst sitting on the ground nonetheless.

Shalnark sighed and took the welding face cover off his head, shaking his bangs loose. The least he could do was sit down and avoid any worst case scenarios that could arise.

"I got paid today," Senja said when he'd sat down. She brought out items from her bag, setting aside the rice and a few cans, placing a box of crackers and vegetables on the table.

His nose scrunched at the sight. "Carrots again?"

The man swiped two from the batch, leaning back and crunching through both at the same time, the vegetable looking rather small in his fist. If he covered up one eye to block out one arm in the sling, he would have thought the man was perfectly healthy. He wondered if the giant even felt pain.

"How do you know Shalnark?" Senja asked, springing up the question so suddenly that his heart leapt to his throat.

"Oh, the runt tried to stea-"

Quick as lightening, Shalnark grabbed a carrot from the table, and just like he'd played darts with Senja many times before, he hurled it the man's way, zipping past his hands and hitting him smack in the back of the throat with its semi-wilted tip.

But it was too late. The word had been blurted, and Senja had heard it. "Shalnark?" She didn't give him time to respond as she stood, hand firmly planted on the table with a thump that made him freeze. "Shalnark, you know how I feel about stealing!"

"So? It ended up being mine anyways!" he tried to defend. "I didn't even succeed, too!"

"Nothing is about motive. It is about the ideas that drive it, and you willingly tried to steal! I told you..."

"I know!" His voice cracked already, and his eyes were watering. He was not sad, or scared, not feeling any emotions that should cause tears, but he was being yelled at, and he didn't like it. He'd never been yelled at before. Not be her. Shalnark tried not to look in the direction where he'd hidden bits of the phone he'd stolen. "I know, I know, I...!" Why was he so weak? He angrily bit his lower lip to stop its quivering. It didn't help that the man was openly staring at the two and their sudden fight, eating the carrot chucked at him as if it was entertainment. His eyes drilled into his back, but he didn't want to give into the pressure.

Many thoughts ran through his head. It was unfair, it was all unfair! It was his own, and anyways, Senja was the only one he knew who wasn't lax on stealing. It was a necessity in the city, and he'd needed it for his job! And it had been his own anyways, at least the time Senja was talking about, and it hadn't even worked, and...

It was unfair, and he didn't feel guilty, but he did feel a bit bad. He lowered his head and wiped at his eyes with the heels of his palms. "I just wanted to do my job."

She was silent for a moment before sighing. "I know you mean good. You're a good person, Shal. These things trouble others, so try not to do it again."

He nodded along with her words, but he knew himself, and on the inside, his heart was ready to grab what he needed and run the second it called for it.

They sat down in time and Shalnark let her take the remaining carrot, and he took the box of crackers to comfort himself, having read that glutenous foods helped when he was down. It worked a little, he thought as the salt of his tears mixed in with the flavor of the cracker.

* * *

The man responded with a too quick and too happy "that's fine" when Senja apologized for the fight, unable to hide his enjoyment at having seen the drama.

(He didn't know why Senja insisted on keeping up this facade, why she cared so much of what other people thought of her, or how they felt because of her. If anyone witnessed their fighting, it was their problem if they had complaints with it, not his. There wasn't any need to apologize, was there?)

"I said sorry on the way here," he lied, trying not to shift his gaze off to the side as he did so.

"He did?"

"Uh, sure. Yeah, sure, the runt did."

He was grateful the giant covered for him.

Senja asked the man whether she could offer him anything else, and after replying that he needed a place to hide out for a few days, she agreed to let him stay. He would sleep on the floor on a reed mat, but because the ground was soft dirt and dust, it would be comfortable and warm. Anything he rested on would most likely be crushed anyways, and Shalnark wanted to minimize the amount of fixing jobs he had to do. He had only one good hand to work with, after all.

He looked to his current project and sighed, almost hearing Senja's tired voice in his own. Though he'd finished welding, with only one hand, he would be pulling an all-nighter. Nothing new, but the day had been exhausting, full of attacks and starved dogs and strange men.

And once again, while he was trying to work, Senja and the man began to talk nonstop. The man seemed to be already in his twenties, his hair jet black and with curling tips sticking at least a foot off his head. That was about ten or twenty years younger than Senja, but in size, he towered over the woman. Shalnark supposed age and size balanced out somehow (though the units were completely off), leaving the two on the same level so they could see eye to eye and hit it off immediately.

He clenched his teeth as midnight struck, and he eventually had to turn on his lamp with limited batteries to work, but their chatter continued, filling his ears and rattling his head. "Senja." He tried to keep from yelling. He didn't like yelling and didn't want to do that anymore. It didn't feel nice. "Please shh."

After quite a few more tries at this, she gave in and settled down to sleep, leaving space for Shalnark to join her later. Having one nuisance gone, it was only a matter of the other.

"What'd'ya making, runt?"

Shalnark felt a very deep satisfaction when he didn't move to let him see. "It's a burner for Kat. It didn't work, so he brought it to me. I fix things around here."

"You any good?" His tone was questioning. "You're, like, four."

He tried a hard scowl he'd seen on the faces of many fighters, but his expression came out merely annoyed. He held up his injured hand, then three more fingers on the other. "Eight summers. That's double what you guessed." He lowered his arms and got back to work. "And it's my job. Of course I'm good at it."

"If you say so, runt. You'd make a terrible thief, though." His sling and the arm in it came to rest across his chest as he lay down on the reed mat, finally showing signs of going to sleep. "I mean really, that was a terrible attempt at stealing from me. And me, of all people! I mean, that was really bad-"

"Goodnight," the boy stated, as a subtle way to say 'shut up'. He tinkered away for a few moments before speaking up again. "And my name is Shalnark. Not Runt."

He'd expected the man to laugh at him for this, but he didn't, instead letting loose a simple "Hm" as his eyes moved to moonlight on the ground through cracks from the doorway.

"Now don't talk to me. I have to work and get this done by morning-"

"Work, work, work," the giant yapped, mocking him. "That's all you ever talk about, Runt." He went quiet after this, and Shalnark almost thought he'd gone to sleep before he spoke up. "Uvogin," he finally said. "My name's Uvogin. Now stop your babbling. You're too loud."

Shalnark, who had spent the past four hours pleading for the two grown ups to zip their mouths shut and coat it with sealant, took a moment to breathe in before he decided it was his turn to be loud, and shrieked:

"Excuse me!?"

I am so sorry for the late update. I've been trying to finish another book of mine by the end of summer so I haven't been able to focus on this one >~<

Yay it's uvo lets go! I don't think I cried when he... you know... tbh I was more sad about the fact that Kurapika was driven to such a point. Poor kid.

But hey, with Uvo, you know who's going to follow close behind! From this point onward, Shalnark's never going to be able to catch a break.

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